Using etchants for copper removal is known. Certain traditional etchants are typically highly acidic cupric chloride solutions that use chloride as a complexing agent to stabilize copper in solution. Use of these traditional etchants and processes are often disadvantageous due to their corrosive and toxic nature. Moreover, etching reactions associated with metal reclamation often prematurely quench due to the formation of metal oxide(s) (e.g., copper oxide(s)) at higher copper concentrations during these processes, thus highly limiting metal recovery yields, the rate of overall metal recovery/etching reactions, metal reclamation duration, or a combination thereof when using traditional processes.
Therefore, a need exists to provide processes that avoid the above mentioned disadvantages of traditional copper etching while concurrently increasing desired metal recovery yields from waste products.